PROJECT DETAILS WRITTEN BELOW.
Curatorial writing that gives details of installation:
Formally, a multitude of references cascade throughout this work. On the walls, the negative space of small-scale prints from a family album depicting a child, a young white male body, have been etched out to reveal a white ground. These personal images of the artist himself are mounted among English Ivy toile wallpaper, first introduced in the 18th century, and recreated for this exhibition. In its initial form, the wallpaper was found to be a toxic material due to the pigments, and the ivy itself became an invasive species. In the middle of the room, sits a vitrine that was once used in the V&A Museum in London, and holds many of the tools used to etch the photographs, along with remnants of removal. It also includes the 35mm camera used to capture the images, and a family album. The formal analogues to renaissance moments are abundant, but it is the space between them that the conceptual analogue truly takes hold. All together, they resonate as a foregrounding of the gaze, a subtly disquieting review of surroundings that shape and inform the strangeness of looking, while provoking a clear eyed critique of white supremacy.
